REBEL YELL/ PLAINTIVE CRY: Reflections on ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’
Let this song I’m singing be a warnin’. When you’re runnin’ down my country, man you’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me — Merle Haggard, The Fightin’ Side of Me
as I went walking I saw a sign there, and the sign said “No Trespassing.” but on the other side it didn’t say nothing. That side was made for you and me — Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Made for You and Me
Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car. Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war — Steve Earle, Rich Man’s War
Splitting (also called black-and-white thinking, thinking in extremes or all-or-nothing thinking) is the failure in a person’s thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both perceived positive and negative qualities of something into a cohesive, realistic whole. It is a common defense mechanism wherein the individual tends to think in extremes (e.g., an individual’s actions and motivations are all good or all bad with no middle ground). This kind of dichotomous interpretation is contrasted by an acknowledgement of certain nuances known as “shades of gray”. — Wikipedia Definition of the Psychological term ‘Splitting’
Oliver Anthony can strike a cord, musically and emotionally. He has come from nowhere to captivate the internet with well over twenty million views in less than two weeks with his acoustic guitar ballad, ”Rich Men North of Richmond”. Many on the left have excoriated the work and linked it with another summer culture-war anthem, Jason Aldean’s “Try That in A Small Town.” Both songs channel anger triggered by rural people feeling they have been ignored by the ruling class, which they see as ‘liberal’ and out of touch with their values. Anthony, however, has a genuine grass roots feeling, whereas Aldean is the product of music industry executives cashing in on a specific kind of rage. Anthony doesn’t rely on a team of songwriters and the publicity department of a major label. In fact this is what he said to Billboard Magazine:
“I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression.People in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off 8 million dollar offers. I don’t want 6 tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet. I don’t want to play stadium shows”
One can only imagine the despair of the music executives. They are standing in front of a Scots-Irish Appalachian Elvis and he wants to talk values, instead of money. Who is this guy with a wavy red beard, mountain good-looks and a voice channeling a male version of Janis’ scream? It turns out that the singer’s full name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. His stage name derives from honoring his Appalachian grandfather, who lived a hard luck life, working numerous jobs after earning a GED. Whatever the veracity of Mr. Anthony’s claims, which I believe to be true, his work stands on its own and should be closely watched by those on both the left and right. The open & closing stanzas tells a dispiriting truth felt in both urban ghettos on the coast and small towns in Appalachia:
I’ve been selling’ my soul, workin’ all day Overtime hours for bullshit pay
It is unfortunate that culture warriors focus on the bogeymen and not the overall message. Mr. Anthony puts forth the familiar tropes that are the reason for all the problems: the government, pedophile billionaires and underclass people receiving welfare. He feels the biggest problem is Rich men north of Richmond. For those unfamiliar with civil war history Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. Obviously this somewhat subtle homage to the good ole antebellum era is disconcerting. The lyric about the morbidly obese welfare receipt is also unsettling. Both references are the type of non-starter message that pushes listeners into their respective corners of the political divide. The echo of states rights and the glorification of the Jim Crow South is a widely used device in many conservative circles. Ronald Reagan opened his campaign in Philadelphia Mississippi and spoke about, “states right.” The former President also used the term “welfare queen”, an effective political dog whistle for those skeptical of those on public assistance. Anthony recycles standard red meat of the conservatives, but he also breaks new ground. He talks about the overall system. The bottom line: America is no longer the land of opportunity for average people.
It would be very easy for both sides to seize on Anthony’s hot button rhetoric to prove their own perspectives. But it is important to recognize the opening and closing lines about selling your soul for bullshit pay. Those words go beyond the left right divide. That sort of lyric would fit into a Woody Guthrie ballad. There is also the reference to the Clinton-friend, Trump-neighbor, Jeffrey Epstein, whose sins span the political spectrum. The billionaire pedophile was a certified member of the ruling class who could call upon favors by a prominent Harvard Law professor, titans of the business world and political heavy hitters. Those rich men north of Richmond work for richer men who haunt the background. Mr. Anthony’s anthem identifies the injustice, but strays from the set script about who is to blame. There is the familiar government scapegoat combined with the feckless parasites that take advantage of a corrupt system… but there is also the feeling of marginalization DUE TO THAT SYSTEM. He is screaming, literally, “I work at a bullshit job for no pay. WHO IS TO BLAME?”
Everyone who engages in modern American life knows the gangsterism of major corporations when managing communications, banking, online accounts, cable, energy…. No one is spared the endless wait times and never-ending unresolved issues often triggered by the company’s own mistakes. We can all agree the current power structure is invasive and terrifying. Regulators are asleep at the switch and, with the flip of a switch, your life will become chaotic and the entities will not be sanctioned. How many people do you know who have, due to no fault of their own, their credit or communications or reputation hurt by actions of large corporations? In Anthony’s telling:
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control, wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do ’cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end… CAUSE OF RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND (my emphasis)
Unfortunately this is a half truth. As Anthony states, politicians in DC are at fault. Fair enough, but who is really behind the push to allow our privacy and financial security to be up for grabs? The answer to that question lies in who benefits. There are powerful interests who back the straw men in Washington. Anthony focuses on the government. The next line hints at the man metaphorically behind the curtain:
I wish politicians would look out for miners and not just minors on an island somewhere.
This reference to the symbol of ruling class greed, speaks to a larger truth that Anthony, for all his passion, never addresses head on. There are immensely rich, powerful people, behind the scenes, who bend the system to their own personal ends. Regular order does not apply to them. Rather than develop that line of thinking, Anthony sticks to the right’s favorite whipping boy, the government. His outrage is selective as it extends exclusively to those holding office and the most vulnerable poor, rather than those who buy their services and profit the most.
His assessment of the government’s failure to address poverty extends this strange tendency to shoot at the wrong target. In this case it is both naive and mean.
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare
Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
’Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down
Certainly there are people who cheat social assistance programs, but how does that measure in the larger system? In a country that has a beleaguered primary school system, little basic regulation protecting consumer’s privacy, basic health care that is out of reach for many, a codified taxation code that has corporations and the wealthy individuals paying a MUCH lower share of their income; not to mention a higher education system that puts many into indentured servitude while ensuring banks and universities are indemnified — is the short 300 lb person on the dole the primary problem? This point of view certainly props up the “us vs. them, black and white, all good-all bad” paradigm which has allowed the Rich Men North of Richmond to ignore solutions that might alleviate everyone’s suffering. A great example would be the regulation of drug pricing. Is there a sentient being in the world who thinks American government policy is fair to anyone, except those entrenched entities that gouge the sick at will?
In the social media age, brought to us by Zuckerberg, Dorsey, etc, cruelty has been completely unchained and overt piggery is no longer a cause for shame. In today’s news I read about groups of tourists snorkeling off the beach while Hawaiian families searched for their loved ones after the devastating wildfire. Is it any wonder, if this is the general tenor of things, that the Supreme Court needs to rule on whether the Sackler family should be allowed to retain billions of dollars they “earned” by creating the opioid crisis? Is it any wonder that Harvard University, with a $53 billion endowment, openly encourages its own graduate students to apply for food stamps? Walmart and McDonalds also have thousands of workers receiving help from this government program. These systematic examples are excluded in Mr. Anthony’s justifiable outrage against powerful interests working against working people. The problem is that speaking too clearly and plainly about fundamental flaws in the system goes against the orthodoxy of his tribe. If you take the bogeyman of government out of the bullshit pay equation, you start drifting against an orthodoxy of free market solutions. Despite the artful portrayals of corrupt politicians and fat lazy welfare recipients, one senses Mr. Anthony knows the problems are really institutional. To paraphrase his own lyrics: he don’t think he knows, but he knows that he does. The song has a broadness that suggests it wants to break free of the low earth orbit of ideological set piece villains.
It would be unkind and thoughtless to mock Mr. Anthony’s pain and the hurt that many in his community feel. It is easy to seize on his tone deaf reference to the Confederacy and dismiss his simplistic scapegoating. But he is pointing out real systemic problems. The irony is that any gap that currently exists between the 300 lb welfare receipt, the working stiff, the man in the gray flannel suit, blue collar, white collar, college instructor… are all being swept away by the brave new world of AI and automation… We are all old souls in a brave new world. I would have appreciated seeing Mr. Anthony on the late night shows… but they’re on strike due to corporate greed via AI threatening their livelihood. Meanwhile two ruling class titans, Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg, debate on whether they should engage in a physical cage fight against each other. They have assured us the proceeds would go to charity…. To quote Mr. Anthony:
It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
In the end who is to blame for Mr. Anthony working long hours for bullshit pay? Elon Musk and Red Bear have a similar point of view. Regulation, safeguards, restraints, are the source of all our ills. “Sink or swim” will save us. In reality it will save Mr. Musk, not Mr. Anthony. Fat cats love it when regular people fight amongst themselves: HEY FATTY, TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN! I can feel them laughing… all the way to the bank. When they fight each other, it’s just for fun. When Mr. Anthony, and most others, struggle, they pay a real price. They sink. That’s the way the system works.
